


Mayor Silver Fox

by somewhereelse



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Future, Olicity Hiatus Fic-A-Thon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 16:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11361087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somewhereelse/pseuds/somewhereelse
Summary: Future fic. Late one night, Felicity's observational skills shake Oliver to his very core.





	Mayor Silver Fox

**Author's Note:**

> Olicity Hiatus Fic-A-Thon Week 6 prompt: Unintentional Discovery.

“Oliver?”

It was the rare night where they were the only two left in the bunker. He had taken the opportunity to _be_ as tired as he felt, no need to maintain the mask of fearless leader. When it had been just the three of them, he had been more comfortable indulging his more human weaknesses, but these days there were appearances to keep up in front of the team.

“Hmm?” he mumbled into his folded arms as he sat slumped over the conference table. The distinctive sound of heels on metal told him Felicity had neared to hover at his left shoulder. He expected her to tell him that she was ready to go home, but the next words out of her mouth startled him.

“Are you—are you graying?”

“What!?” Oliver just about yelped and shot to his feet, forgetting that she was leaning over him. He twisted around to steady her before she could stumble and sent her a dirty look for her barely suppressed laughter. “No,” he pouted, reaching up a hand to cover his hair, as if she could see the crown of his head with their standing height difference.

At his offended glare, the laugh burst out, and she reached up to tug his wrist down. “What? Like you can see the top of your own head?” He dialed the glare up to Green Arrow level, but she just laughed harder. They really needed to work on her underdeveloped sense of self-preservation. “Huh. That whole “grow old together” thing is kicking in a whole lot sooner than I expected.”

“Stop.” His half-hearted protest fell on deaf ears as Felicity headed for the garage, trusting him to follow.

* * *

He considered asking the public relations team, but if they hadn’t noticed, he didn’t want to bring it to their attention. The last thing he needed was them polling the constituents about the mayor’s premature aging. So he decided to question the only man in his life old enough to have confronted this problem. (Probably weird that there’s only one, but he wasn’t going to dwell on that.)

“Quentin?” The deputy mayor grunted in acknowledgment, and Oliver took that as a sign to continue. “Why’d you buzz your head?”

Confused, he frowned at the file he was reviewing but didn't look up to answer. “Couple of reasons. Got tired of my girls mocking me, always called it an “unprofessional bird’s nest”. And, you know, hairline was starting to go but that’s not surprising given my mom’s side of the family.” Oliver breathed a quiet sigh of relief, but it was too soon. “Oh, and I was starting to gray. Doesn’t show as much when I keep it short. Why’d you ask?”

The response was a _damn it_  and a dull thud, and Lance looked up to see the mayor slumped over in defeat, his forehead on the surface of his desk. “Never mind then.” 

* * *

“Dig?” Oliver asked as they changed into their uniforms for another night of patrolling. His best friend paused in the act of lacing up his shoes to look up at him. “Do you ever worry about getting older?”

“Oliver,” Dig sighed impatiently, “I have a wife and a kid, and we spend our nights illegally chasing down criminals, who generally react to our presence with violence. Lots of violence. If I didn’t worry, I’d be crazy.”

“No, not like that. I don’t mean getting injured or killed. I mean _old_.” Oliver cleared his throat self-consciously, knowing it was a strange clarification to make. What kind of wacko worried about getting old over getting maimed and/or killed? This one, apparently.

Dig pinned him with a searching look. A different person— _Felicity_ —would have withered and rambled their— _her_ —way into a hole, but he held strong, waiting for Dig to answer the question as asked. “Is this your way of saying your knee is bothering you again?”

“No, my knee is fine.” For once, Oliver wasn’t lying about the state of his knee since Felicity had convinced him to start physical therapy with Paul. “I just meant, you know, aging, forgetting things, your body doing weird shit. _Old_ old.”

Instinctively, Dig scoffed. “Diggle’s don’t age. You’ve met my ma. She’s pushing seventy and she’s as spry as a spring chicken.” After a small hesitation, his expression transformed into scared with a side of intimidating, “Don’t ever tell her I told you how old she is.”

Oliver chuckled but in truth he knew exactly how frightening Mrs. Diggle could get. Hell, Lyla put more effort into avoiding the woman's bad side than she did into avoiding starting (accidental) wars. “My lips are sealed.”

“Aging isn’t something to worry about, man. Not when the alternative is, well, death,” Dig pointed out pragmatically. “If you feel like you need to take a step back, that’s why we have a team now. Honestly, I’ll need to do that soon, and I won’t feel an ounce of shame about it. Worried that we’re leaving more of the city’s safety in Rene’s and Curtis’ hands, but no shame. You shouldn’t either.”

Dig clapped him on the shoulder after he muttered a sincere _thanks_. Oliver waited for Dig to vacate the room before letting his shoulders slump. Of course Dig wasn’t worried about it. Based on his mother, the man was going to look thirty-five until the day he died. 

* * *

“Ollie’s been spending a lot of time looking in mirrors lately,” Thea noted when Oliver paused in front of the thin reflective border around the edge of the uniform cases.

Felicity froze, perfectly aware of the odd behavior and how it coincided with her observation of his hair color the other night. “Hmm, yeah, I guess,” she hedged, reluctant to draw more attention to it. She hadn’t known Oliver to be self-conscious about anything, not even all those scars. After that first night when Dig had cut off his shirt to patch up the bullet wound, Oliver seemingly never bothered to find a shirt again, much to her everlasting viewing pleasure. But, for whatever reason, this hair thing was different for him.

“Be careful he doesn’t turn back into pre-island Ollie,” Thea cautioned, dropping into the spare chair next to her desk. In response to her confused look, Thea elaborated, “What? He was a good big brother. He also spent an entire night of babysitting me practicing his eyebrow raise in the mirror instead of actually, you know, babysitting me. I guess he’s still weird and self-obsessed like that. Come to think of it, yesterday he asked me if buzz cuts were in style.”

“Ugh, no, not again,” her nose scrunched in distaste, “I need at least a handful to—”

“Hey!” Thea slammed her hands over her ears. “What is with you two and this profound dedication to ensuring that I need therapy? Psycho murderous mom, dad, and sperm donor aren’t enough? You have to add details about big brother’s sex life to the list?”

“Sorry.” Feeling bad for the verbal gaffe, she decided to confide in Thea. “Don’t tell Oliver I told you this, but I made a joke about his hair graying the other night and I think it’s really getting to him.”

“Oh, is that what he’s been freaking out about?” Thea questioned with a scoff. “Yeah, I’ve been mixing hair dye into the shampoo he keeps down here. Teach him to call me old just because I looked something up on Urban Dictionary.”

Felicity gaped at the casual confession, and Oliver ran over when her tablet fell from loose fingers to land on the metal floor with a loud clang. “What? What’s wrong?” he demanded but all the two women did was make prolonged eye contact with each other.

“Nothing,” Thea responded first, giving him a sweet smile. Oliver just rolled his eyes and turned to Felicity. Eventually, she parroted Thea, and he reluctantly stepped off the platform.

“Thea, you have to fix this!” Felicity whisper-shouted once he wandered well out of hearing distance to beat up a training dummy. She’d been burned by his freaky good hearing before and knew the few spots in the bunker where she truly had to raise her voice to get his attention.

In the spirit of little sisters everywhere, Thea was wholly unconcerned. “It’s not permanent. It’s not even like he showers down here every day. I’ll just get him a new bottle of shampoo, and it’ll wash out in a few days. Way to move up my timetable and ruin my fun. I wasn’t going to tell him until the press figured it out and gave him another terrible nickname. I bet you no one even notices now. You two are just creepily observant about each other.”

Felicity couldn’t argue with that. She had nicknames for Oliver’s different grunts—all twenty-two of them—and he could tell her energy level based on the angle of her ponytail. Thea clapped her hands together and changed the subject as if the matter was settled, and she could only hope that her sister-in-law was right.

* * *

Oliver couldn’t believe this was happening. Granted Robert Queen’s life had been less stressful than Oliver’s (though with his secret affairs and murder cover-ups, maybe it hadn’t), but his dad didn’t start graying until a few years before he died, his mid-forties at the earliest. Yet here he was, barely into his mid-thirties, and staring at a headline proclaiming him “Mayor Silver Fox”—and he thought it couldn’t get worse than “Mayor Handsome”. Felicity had tried to convince him that the photo color was just desaturated, but it was a transparent lie, especially compared to the bright, _bright_ red Star City Rockets jersey in his photo-self’s hands.

“While the new look appeals to a certain demographic—one mature, female citizen responded with a succinct _rawr—_ ” Oliver cringed at Thea’s sound effect— “Mayor Silver Fox’s popularity with the youth vote, including his own wife, is in jeopardy.” Thea tossed the paper on his desk before lounging in one of his chairs with a smug ( _too_ smug?) smile. “A fine example of the Star City press’ reductive stereotyping and grasping fearmongering. Reminds me of your ex-girlfriend’s “reporting”.”

With a long suffering deep sigh, Oliver ground out, “It’s been literal years. You have actually thanked me for marrying Felicity and getting you the best sister ever. You can stop now.”

“Hashtag never forget, Ollie.” He rolled his eyes at her flippant response but she ignored him. “Just a friendly reminder about what's waiting for you, AKA your otherwise terrible taste in woman, if you lose the youth vote, AKA your marriage, so step up your game with the best sis-in-law ever, big bro. By the way, the PR team is losing their collective shit out there.”

Oliver brushed off the gibe at his marriage because he was _acing_ husband’ing. Felicity even made him a revised report card for their first wedding anniversary, although she did leave that D in Algebra. She maybe muttered something about keeping his ego in check, but in the spirit of being an A+ husband, he gave her the benefit of the doubt. Instead, he focused on the lack of focus among his staff. “Shouldn’t you be doing something about that, chief of staff?”

“I already fixed it.” Oliver scowled at her confident answer, and the scowl deepened as she proudly continued, “I got you a new bottle of shampoo.” When he only stared blankly at her, Thea rolled her eyes. “I put hair dye in your shampoo in the bunker, dummy. That’s what you get for calling me old. Anyway, it should wash out in a few days.”

A few moments passed before he processed the full impact of her words. He _knew_ her smile had been too smug. Oliver couldn’t believe how unconcerned she was, or that she was still relaxed and reclined in that chair. So many people in his life needed to work on their underdeveloped sense of self-preservation. Finally, he landed on the most important issue. “Everyone’s going to think I dyed my hair when it goes back to normal.”

“Oh, right,” Thea paused before issuing a self-satisfied smirk, “Whoops.”

* * *

Felicity twitched nervously when Thea’s face appeared on the screen. She’d been expecting Dig to answer since he offered to overwatch that night when she got stuck at work. “Hey, Thea. Uh, just wanted to let you guys know that Oliver’s sitting out tonight.”

The younger woman’s expression twisted into a concerned frown. “Is everything okay? I haven’t seen him since before his lunch meeting.”

“Yeah, he’s fine. He’s just—” she threw a look over her shoulder at the staircase and lowered her voice— “He’s in the shower.”

“ _Gross_ ,” Thea grimaced, “How many times do I—”

Felicity cut her off with an eye roll. “Not like that. I mean, he’s _been_ in the shower. Probably since after his lunch meeting. I think he’s washed his hair like twenty times already.” By the time she shut down the transmission, the screen was empty because Thea was literally rolling on the floor laughing. And she thought that was just a thing you pretended to do on the Internet.

Tossing her tablet on the couch, Felicity raced up the stairs. Time to restore her husband’s ego.


End file.
